Swimming Lessons: Poems

This book was like peering into someone else’s brain and seeing my own thoughts. I couldn’t put it down and read it all in one day. Reinhart covers love, relationships, mental health, and the fleeting nature of life. This is a book I’ll be coming back to again and again! Is there anything Lili Reinhart can’t do?

Lili Reinhart pours out her soul in this book full of poems, of which are rooted much in love, depression & anxiety turned into radiant, intelligent, and insightful thoughts and entries. This is just the beginning for Reinhart as a writer, I absolutely cannot wait to read more from her in the future!!!!

I have loved everything about this poem book... Lili did an amazing job at making the poems personalized, which makes it all the much better for the reader (i.e., me)!If you have gone through a heartbreak or been in love, read this!

I pre-ordered this book months ago. I was so excited to get this book yesterday. I read the whole thing in about 50 min. Some of the poems are 2 lines, most of them are super super short. These poems barely catch my attention, maybe about 8 truly did. Maybe I'm just being biased because I love to read poetry that makes me think and feel, and these poems barely did just that. I think it's maybe ment for a more teenage audience (I'm 22). It's honestly not bad for being her first poetry book, I just feel she held back a lot of her feelings in her words. I will say though, it does make me feel like I'm living a high school romance reading it, bittersweet feeling.

Lili is so raw and honest in her poetry. Her rhythm and rhyme are so enticing. I've been writing poetry for several years, and I love when I can connect with someone else's words and feel something. Words are so powerful because pain is universal, as is love. We are all human. I, too, battle with depression and anxiety. It's hard to function with change and constant worry, but poetry is a way to understand the pain and to connect. Poetry is a vulnerable art. It involves showing the world our wounds, and I'm glad Lili chose to share her mind and emotions with the world. There are so many lines where I stop and re-read the words because they are so addicting. "Sometimes I open my eyes when we kiss to see if you're as lost in me as I am in you." Through her words, I learn more about myself. I'm able to analyze my subconscious and unravel why certain phrases impact me so much. "I wish I would've kissed you harder before I left this morning." With this statement, I feel my own regret when I leave in an anxious mood and don't give my significant other much attention. Anxiety, for me, makes it difficult for me to function properly. It's easier for me to want to shut down-- and I accidentally shut out those around me. With Lili's collection of poetry, I really enjoy the different moods from poem to poem. Will the next page make me feel passion or heartache, happiness or loneliness? To me, this shows how emotions change so quickly. One trigger or one event, one word even, can alter our perception and change our mood completely. I feel her loneliness when she says, "Driving home with an empty passenger seat, an aching reminder of you leaving me" and cries a tear into her coffee in the drawing next to her poetry. On page 67, she says, "I keep reminding myself that we are not feeling the same things. You said so yourself, I'm more invested than you are." She continues, "I'm sitting miles from you, it seems." I feel her pain in being a poet, an analyzer of everything. As poets, we are passionate and invested. For me, I need constant reassurance, or I'll feel a sense of impending doom, and, for me, it's hard to keep people around because my emotions are so intense. She continues, "And that's what hurts the most. Feeling this alone." The word "alone," whether I'm writing a poem of my own or reading it in text, digs a hole of loneliness and heartache in my chest. Lili finds the perfect combination of words and phrases to take me on a journey of self- discovery and of human understanding. Though the pain can seem unbearable sometimes, we are not alone. We are all fighting battles, and by sharing our pain, though difficult sometimes, it can help us see that we aren't as alone as we make ourselves believe.